At barely 5′ tall and too much weight for my height, I have also gone through the gamut of emotions, I’m not thin enough. I’m not pretty enough, I’m too old to be sexy and desirable.

Somewhere along the line I finally decided to own it! This is me world, take or leave it! And you know what happened? More people liked me because I liked me. Did I lose they weight? No. Did I change my body? No I changed my mindset and it set off a chain reation! Someone once said you can’t expect someone else to love you until you love yourself and I have had that proven to me!

In some ways, it’s harder to hate your body when you’re thin than when you’re overweight.

Besides your own body negative narrative, you invite hate from others who think you are being an indulgent first world bitch.

I have always loved food. The taste of it; the experience of it; preparing it as an act of love. Sharing it with friends; digging into a holiday meal with family.

It’s sensuous and sublime and one of the great experiences in life.

Unfortunately, I was also an emotional eater as far back as childhood. Food was a replacement for love and attention.

I was a super skinny kid, before it was chic to be skinny. I had a big butt and a flat chest and I hated my lopsided, pear-shaped body. I cried shopping for jeans that fit. If they fit around my waist, I couldn’t pull them up over my ass.

Parental pride in pink This is a post I originally wrote in October of 2014 but never got around to posting. I found it in my files and decided to do this as a throwback Thursday. #tbt The photo shows dear darling son on the far side of the trombone line, pink hoodie and pink ribbon painted on his face.

I have come to realize that I’m raising a pretty great kid! Yes I am biased but I also recognize his faults as well as his positives. He is a bit of a non- conformist. I don’t know where he came up with that trait. Me, you say? Well, you’re probably right! Anyway, it was a little cool this morning when we got into my truck for the drive to school. Neither of us had grabbed a jacket but I had my zip front, pink, hooded sweatshirt on the backseat so I grabbed it and put it on. At this point dear darling son said he wished he had grabbed a jacket. So, in jest, I asked “You want to wear my pink hoodie?” To which he replied, “Yeah” I looked at him a little incredulously wondering what he was thinking. “They’ve been talking at school about the breast cancer thing and said we should wear pink.”
For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, October is the month where EVERYTHING turns pink in support of and to raise money for breast cancer research and awareness. So, my dear darling son, being the sensitive creature he is, decided to wear my pink hoodie to school. We got in the turn lane to turn into the school complex and since we were stopped at the light, I took off my jacket and handed it over to him at which point he promptly put it on. He looked at me and sort of chuckled. “I’m not sure what I think about this but I don’t care what anyone else says, I’m going for it!”

One of the assistant principals was walking out as my son was walking in and he had a pale pink dress shirt on. It looked like he said something to my son. Maybe he gave him some positive comment on wearing pink!
That I have raised a son who is not only sensitive in many ways but also brave enough to do whatever he wants even if it’s not the “popular” thing is a point of pride. He is not content to follow the crowd. He will take his own path and if someone wants to come along with him, fine, if not, oh well! Hopefully this doesn’t turn out to be a disaster but knowing my son, he’ll just shrug his shoulders and tell anyone who has anything to say about it, “This is what I wanted to do and I did it and I don’t care if you don’t like it!”
Now as long as he doesn’t let his girlfriend wear it or leave it in his locker and he brings it home, we’ll be good.

My new unpleasant word that drives me crazy is occlusion. Now, this word has several meanings but in my case it has to do with a blockage in my dear darling son’s insulin pump. Just a quick overview for those of who who have no clue what in the world I’m talking about. For people who are insulin dependent because of diabetes, namely Type 1, they may have the option to use a pump rather than shots. This has good and bad points but I feel the good outweighs the bad, at least in our case. Basically there is a pump with a cartridge of insulin connected by a hollow tubing to an infusion site with a small opening called a cannula under the skin. Normally you replace the cartridge, tubing and infusion site at the same time. A cartridge will last, on average, about 3 days. But dear darling son being a teenager and life being what it is, we had replaced his infusion site because it had become disconnected during the night the night before. I came home from work and my son handed me his pump and said “The cartridge is empty” Now, he knows how to refill the cartridge but if I’m around then I get called on to take care of it. Just like when he’s hungry, he knows how to make a sandwich or such but will ask me to do it instead. Yeah, he’s spoiled but that’s how it goes sometimes. So I decide to just refill the cartridge and change the rest later. Wrong! When you refill the cartridge, you have to prime the tubing. After changing out the cartridge the pump automatically prompts you to prime. I hit the button, wait for it to start and BAM! the alarm goes off. Display indicates occlusion. This can be from a bubble where the tubing meets the cartridge, a kink in the tubing or sometimes a problem with the cannula. The last thing I wanted was more frustration from this infuriating disease, but I disconnected the tubing, got a new one and restarted the priming. At this point I told my son we might as well change the infusion site. He resisted and I can’t blame him so I relented and said ok we’ll leave it. The priming finished and I handed the pump back to him. After he reconnected the tubing to the infusion site, you can just guess what happened—–BEEP alarm—-OCCLUSION! Yep, so that is my new unfavorite word! Diabetes is a close second.

Ahoy me hearties. I have been perusing my notebooks and journals and have come across some unseen gems that for one reason or another never got shared. The following one is from a prompt by T.A. Woods over at PenPaperPad. She wanted a story around April Fool’s Day (now you know how old this is). So rather than wait till next year, I am going to go ahead and share it now. Enjoy!
Nautical nonsense
Now while it is a known fact (or possibly just an over-used cliche) that pirates sometimes have a parrot on their shoulder, I refer not to a feathered variety but rather my B.I.R.D.
What is this odd acronym you ask? Well, I’ll tell you just as I told my crew on the early spring day when they asked of me, “How do you seem to know when a battle is imminent and just who we might be up against, Captain?”
“My dear and loyal crew, ’tis nothing for me with the aid of my trusty, all- knowing bird!”

After the guffaws subsided and the pointing at my proud parrot upon my shoulder ceased, I continued.
“I do not refer to the proud and loyal companion you see before you but to an electronic marvel that I utilize in my cabin. My B.I.R.D.”

B.I.R.D. stands for Bionic Intelligent Recon Device.

Sensing I had them just where I wanted them, I told them of the wonderful marvel. This electronic wizardry could see beyond the horizons to places unseen and report back coordinates, directions, strength of possible enemy fleets and even friend or foe status.

One of my more educated crew seemed suspicious. They recalled on a recent shore leave seeing a device that was referred to as a G.P.S. “No, I assured them, this is no GPS unit. This device will accurately tell me the information I need to bravely travel forward.”

At this point they demanded to see this magical device so I had no choice but to herd them all into my cabin (which wasn’t too difficult seeing as how I have a small crew and a very spacious cabin) and reveal my secret. Upon throwing open the doors of the cabinet, they were astounded by……

(featured photo was supposed to be here but either I don’t know what I’m doing or WP hates me) (probably the first)

my B.I.R.D.,!!

Glancing at the calendar on the wall of my cabin, they realized they had been fooled—a crew of fools on April Fool’s Day!!

Ahoy me hearties! I’ve been so preoccupied lately, I forgot I had a blog. Not really but when life does what it does best and everything piles in, sometimes you just need a self-enforced time-out. That’s not to say I haven’t gotten lost in the time suck of social media but I have also been reading a lot more here lately. I’ll give you a brief glimpse into my recent library.

Beth Teliho’s wonderful YA book, Order of Seven was a breath of fresh air and full of suspense, enough so that I had trouble finding a stopping point to put it down. I didn’t want to miss anything and I wanted to find out what was going to happen next.

Kimberly Jayne’s Take my Husband Please was a light-hearted look at divorce. Her describing the bumbling accidents made me laugh out loud but also made my poor klutzy heart feel better knowing maybe I’m not the only person who has endured self-inflicted injuries.

Then there is the incomparable Helena Hann-Basquiat. What can be said about her books? Only that they are incredible, well written, thought provoking and sometimes funny as all get out! The two most recent by her that I read was Leaving Arcadia and Penelope, Countess of Arcadia. Coming from and living mostly in small towns, I identified with Leaving Arcadia. We have all known families like these and wether they were friends or just the family everyone knew about, you knew their stories and you always hoped things would work out for the best and when they didn’t, you just shake your head and “tsk, tsk” the injustice, knowing it will never change and wondering what is wrong in this world.

Penelope was written as a Shakespearian type play. It was fun to read and I found myself re-reading portions just to get the “voice” right. Seeing modern phrases written in language like that made it that much more fun.

The other reading I have been doing is lots of poetry. Hastywords, Laura A Lord, T.A. Woods, just to name a few. The problem with reading poetry is I get words rattling around in my head and I find myself trying to make them make sense (unsuccessfully, mostly), but the following group of words (I won’t call it a poem, seem like an insult) won’t leave me alone so I wrote them down (and typed them out too)! So I’ll add this one to some of the other terrible poetry I have posted here on this journey. Feel free to critique, all suggestions, good bad and indifferent, are welcome.
What has happened

Yes I ripped off the title of a popular book and recent movie but it just goes to prove my point.

I am a terrible friend and family member. I have had friends (very close ones) and relatives with birthdays recently. Did I leave them a message, call them, send a card or in any small way acknowledge them? Nope, not at all!

I am a horrible mom. Dear darling son was in a Veteran’s Day parade (that’s how long ago I started writing this post) and I did manage to take a few pics and even 2 short videos. Did I post any of them and share them with anyone else? Nope, not even close. November 14th was World Diabetes Day. Did I change my profile pic, like I usually do, or use the day to spread understanding and awareness? Nope, not a word!

I am no good. I don’t interact with friends and family on Facebook. Hell, I don’t even remember the last time I logged on. Just not interested. I ignore e-mails from groups that I am supposed to be in. I have read a few blog posts (very few) and “liked” them but went no further such as commenting or even bothering to read others comments.

I am a very bad person. Being a pirate guarantees that but I must have done something beyond bad to alienate some people in my life. How else do you explain this. My dad and his wife made a surprise visit to Florida so she could spend her birthday with her grandchildren. They stopped by my house first on the Friday before Veterans Day. I had the day off work but I had to work the next day. They stayed a little while then headed to her daughter’s house. I thought we would see or at least hear from them before they headed back to North Carolina on Monday but nope, just a FB message that they had made it safely home. I did manage to acknowledge that one.

I have a list of excuses I could use for not writing, blogging, reading, and interacting but that’s all they are—excuses. Yes I am working a real job and I had a lot of hours around the turkey day holiday and the following retail ridiculousness. But I have had plenty of days off to do whatever I wanted. Nothing like driving home the message that your Christmas is going to be slim like watching other people spend hundreds and sometimes more dollars on the day after Thanksgiving. My PC died several months ago but not worried because I had my tablet and had actually gotten pretty good at typing on a touch screen. Then out of the blue the charging port went out so I broke down and took it to a local repair shop. That opened up a bigger bill because of a small crack in the corner of the screen that has been there for awhile. In order to do the job, they are going to have to remove the screen which means they have to replace the screen. Great, a simple repair job becomes a major one, just like that. I currently am working on a borrowed notebook style laptop. I have never had a laptop so this is a totally new experience typing on a laptop keyboard but also learning how to use a touchpad and a touchscreen at the same time. This has resulted in some strange things happening and I have no idea what the hell is going on or how not to do it again.

So as we head into another holiday I would like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and may your seas be calm and your sky’s blue.